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Not Applicable
This invention relates to the production and display of still and motion pictures and more particularly to an improved method and apparatus for producing stereoscopic images, especially analglyphs.
Both still and motion pictures use techniques to improve realism, or three-dimensional, cinematography. xe2x80x9c3-Dxe2x80x9d films use two cameras or one camera with two lenses. The centers of the lenses are spaced 2 xc2xd inches to 2 xc2xe inches apart (60 millimeters-70 millimeters) to replicate the displacement between a viewer""s left and right eye. Each lens records a slightly different view corresponding to the different view each eye sees in normal vision.
Stereo photographic systems have been around for a long time. Stereographic cameras use two distinct optical systems for photographing two separate images of the same subject viewed from different points and formed onto one picture frame next to each other. One such system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,570,150 entitled xe2x80x9cStereo Photographing Systemxe2x80x9d with inventors Yoneyama et al. issued on Oct. 29, 1996.
Despite many efforts to create xe2x80x9c3-D without glassesxe2x80x9d (notably in the U.S.S.R., where a screen of vertical slats was used for many years), audience members have had to wear one of two types of special glasses to watch 3-D films. In the early anaglyph system, one lens of the glasses was red and the other green, which was later, switched to blue. The picture on the screen viewed without glasses appeared as two slightly displaced images, one with red lines, the other with green. Each lens of the glasses darkened its opposite color so that each eye would see only the image intended for it. Anaglyphs have the advantage of being inexpensive and easily adapted to many media. Unfortunately, color rendition inevitably suffers, and commonly must be sacrificed. More information regarding anaglyphs can be found from online URL (http://www.britannica.com).
The use of film based cameras are beginning to be replaced by digital cameras that unlike their film-based counterparts, store images captured in memory into digital memory such as flash memory.
One of the problems with the use of known stereoscopic film based techniques is how to handle xe2x80x9coverlap regionxe2x80x9d between a left-hand image and a right-hand image for anaglyphs. Stated differently, given a left image and a right image of the same scene: 
The outer areas on the left-hand side and the right-hand side contain information only from the single source, i.e., the left-hand source or the right-hand source. In contrast, the overlap area contains information from both the left-hand source and-the right-hand source.
Computer based techniques exist for creating anaglyphs from two images, such as those available from the company A I Effects Inc. at online URL (http://www.aifx.com/3d_home.html). However, these techniques are dependent on the use of a computer with images converted into digital format.
Accordingly, a need exists for a portal stereoscopic digital camera to handle the generation of anaglyph images from two sources to correctly handle the overlap region without the need for an expensive computer.
Briefly, according to the present invention, described is a method in digital stereo camera for creating anaglyphs of a given subject with a pre-set stereoscopic distance (Sd). The camera has a pre-set distance (D) between and an scene plane and a lens plane defined by pair of first and second lenses aligned along a plane. The camera includes a pre-set distance (p) between the lens plane and an image plane. The pair of lenses is coupled to a pair of imagers. The method comprising the steps of: producing a pair of stereo images each having three color channels; cropping each of the pair of images by an amount (b), where b=Sd*(p/D); and combining one color channel from one of the pair of stereo images with two color channels from a second of the pair of stereo images, so that the resulting image comprises three orthogonal color channels.
In another embodiment, a digital stereoscopic camera and a computer readable medium for carrying out the above method is described.